You Fi-yahd!

So, childrens. I have returned from hiatus because I have stuff to tell the peoples.

I got fired yesterday from crappy MyFamily.com job. I always hated my job there, and totally knew this was coming, but didn't really expect it to happen around Christmastime, and definitely not for the reasons that it DID happen.

Apparently my old supervisor, and someone who I thought was a friend, has been grudging me for the past few months because I've remained friends with Su and Dan, and she's been totally embittered. (She thought Dan was madly in love with her. She's frighteningly delusional about relationships...) Anyway, my real supervisor was out of town on Tuesday, because she left for Thanksgiving a day early, and Jillian (the girl in question) was subbing for her.

Turns out Jillian's been trying to get rid of me for ages, because all the part-timers liked me better than her. (I'm not saying this to boast, I'm saying it because it's true.) So she makes up some completely BULLSHIT report about me undermining authority and being willfully disrespectful, and that I was browsing the web way after my break. (I had accidentally left the window open instead of shutting it down before I went back to my auditing work.)

She tells Tony (the manager from hell who hates me because I called him on the carpet for taking advantage of the fact that he's on salary and not hourly pay anymore, and that it's ridiculous that he suddenly only comes in for 15 hours a week tops) that she told me on numerous occasions that she needed me to scan the microfilm rescans, which are always top priority. And he pulled me aside yesterday and threw all this stuff in my face. What sickened me was the fact that he looked so happy while he said it.

In reality, all Jillian had said was, "When you're done with that audit, can you come film scan?" ONE TIME. And by the time I'd finished my audit, my shift was over. I tell Tony this. Tony says, "I have to trust my supervisors, or else everyone will think that I'm bending the rules for you, and I can't do that, or no one will respect the rules or me." Apparently he doesn't know that no one respects him anyway. Sigh.

Then they had me go get my stuff, and took my badge and he made me stand out in the snow for 20 minutes without a jacket while I waited for my ride. Wouldn't even let me wait in the foyer.

Now, I've been looking for another job for months, because I knew that Tony's been prowling for an excuse to throw me out on my ear. But to have a person who I thought was a friend, to have Jillian be the one who stabs in the back, at Christmastime, no less, was what hurt the most.

Y'know, I've always been one to have faith in people. To give humanity the benefit of the doubt. Especially here in Utah, with the predominance of a religion which teaches that Christlike attributes and actions are of the highest priority, and that to love your neighbor as yourself is one of the most important commandments. Sometimes it makes me really sad, to see how so many people blatantly and repeatedly say one thing and do another.

I admit that I haven't always been the best person for sticking to my Mormon beliefs. I do swear, sometimes a lot. And sometimes I, myself, can be really mean, but I don't do either of those things and think that I'm still in the right. And I don't go around telling people to be nice and stop swearing.

I suppose it's easy to understand that in a place where Mormons are so highly concentrated, you get a good dose of those who are Mormon because they think it makes them look good. To the point where looking like they live the gospel is more important than actually living it.

And then, when you superimpose that demographic on top of a corporate environment, I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised that hypocrisy and politics are even more pronounced. And that someone who calls people on the carpet for that sort of thing, someone who has always abhorred injustice, must have no place there.

Is it like that everywhere? I suppose I will never really be able to find a job where I fit in, because I don't fit in. I never have. I say what I think about things. I say how I feel. I tell people the truth, and never sit idly by while people in authority get away with crap.

But apparently those aren't important qualities. Apparently someone who's willing to take a stand is a menace, and not a help. Apparently standing for truth and justice is something that gets you fired, not something that helps.

It's hard, when your optimism, and your willingness to trust people, takes a hit like that. When you get slapped in the face for trying to be a friend, and trying to make a place better.

I think communism is a good idea, in theory. But I'll never believe in it, or advocate it, until you can prove to me than humanity is incorruptible.

Because at the end of the day, it seems, the liars and the hypocrites come out on top. And either there's something fundamentally wrong with the world, or there's something fundamentally wrong with me having faith in people.

And I'd hate to think that it's the latter.

when you're collarless and abandoned

am i the only person who hates it when all of your little lives don't mesh anymore? the frantic, frazzled scraping of recall, recoil, and redirect?

i have no words lately. which irks me because autumn has always been my writing season.

my true love, the love of my life, the exact mirrored opposite soulmate of mine married my psychotic ex-friend in august because he wanted a different kind of mystery. because he wanted someone crazy to dig and explore who wouldn't dig and explore him back. he wanted a girl who didn't know him. and i don't mean in that way. i mean, a girl who didn't know him for who he is. for what he could become. for where he's been. he knew that i saw him, and loved him for all of it. and in the end, it's because i loved him that he couldn't love me.

but then, he did love me. they all love you. it's why they leave. or so they say. it's true though. they find pieces of themself in you and they love you for it. they love being able to give over some part of who they are and to pick up a part of who you are on the way.

and in the end, we really are mostly the people we've given ourselves to at some point along the way.

i'm rambling. about love. all my friends hate it when i do that. because they think it's drama. and they hate The Drama. but it's not drama. it's just life. and how can you live, and breathe, and feel, and not have intense reactions to the massive and glorious amounts of shite that you wade through?

i don't know. it's just...you get to that place when the one person says no. and you can do nothing to change it, because you've made all the right choices, and when it came down to the pivotal moment, someone else made a choice that completely negated all you worked for. all you built and hoped and dreamed and lived.

so how do you go on living when everything behind you has been swept into a heaping pile of nothing; and your best friend who knew you inside out and vice versa, can no longer talk to you, or interact with you, or be with you in any semblance of pureness - or genuinity - because you both know that all their daily functions are some sort of farce: a lie, a thing that they get to play at because it looked fun and interesting and unknown?

(holy shit, that may be the longest sentence i've ever written.)

so i loathe him for turning me into the jilted bitchy ex-girlfriend. i was miss havisham for halloween this year. in my heart.

how do you work around the empty spaces, when they're so conveniently empty in all the places you need to be building on?

i can't write, because it's empty. i reach into this barrel of...whatever...inside of me, and there's nothing.

where the hell is the barrelmaker and who knows his number?!

Nothing important for me to say, today. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.


Sigh.

Weird vibes lately. Odd, discomfort...a sort of tense, coiled, unsprung torrent of confession? No, not confession. Admittance. Reluctant, but inevitable.

I can't find the words. And it's not me, or Scott. It's him.

He's been writing lately. Posts them where I can see them...and they burn in the scars of the little tear-lines. He always finds a way to discomfit me when I'm at a quiet, sincere, comfortable place.

I'm tired of his haunting, of the way he still sits behind corners and peeks at me, to remind me he's there, in the dark, in the wings.

I know he'll never be on the stage with me again, never again will we stand in the streetlight and look at the tree-branches. Confess dreams and meaning and co-write about the things that we saw together. The things we saw of togetherness in the times we were apart.

I keep thinking I'm fixed, that this jigsaw me is sorted out and showing a nice picture.

I keep forgetting that inherently, a jigsaw will always lie in pieces.

He writes about me in the places she can't see them. He leaves me in the background corners of his life now.

Things could have been so different.

I search, scour my collection of music. Scrambling almost frantically...but everything is quiet. So silent.

And I can't find the right song to sing.


October is almost over. I have a lot of writing to do.



To the morning,

Chels

I do what I can...I work with what I have. My doubt is my passion, and my passion is my task.

+50 points for whoever can tell me where that comes from.


The only coworker I really get along with is leaving me today. But I might be following her to her next job... customer service for eBay™. Heck, it's $15 an hour, full time with benefits, and it's right next to my dad's building, so I can hitch a ride to work with him in the mornings. An hour and a half in the car with dad every day might be a bit painful, but at this point, there's not a lot I wouldn't be willing to do for $15/hr AND the pleasure of being able to run screaming from this place.

I'm going to head outside, since it's her last day, and join her on her smoke break.

Later, kids.


Chels

p.s. It was Henry James.